Mobile PPC: The Rise of Facebook Advertising on the Go

PPC is almost synonymous with AdWords, but Google isn’t alone in the paid advertising game anymore. Facebook is determined to challenge Google for the top spot and it’s making an all-out offensive on mobile advertising.

Facebook’s reinvention of the Atlas advertising platform has opened up new opportunities to advertisers and already forced Google to rethink how it serves ads to people across different devices – so what does Facebook advertising mean for your mobile PPC strategy?

Facebook is not an AdWords replacement

The first thing to understand about Facebook advertising is that it’s not a straight swap for AdWords. Facebook can suit certain business types, campaign goals and different audiences more than Google ads – but the opposite is equally as true.

We’re focusing on mobile PPC today, though, and there are some key points to consider with Facebook.

User intent

User intent on mobile and desktop can vary greatly, but you also need to consider the intensions of audiences you reach via Facebook, AdWords and other platforms. Mobile campaigns on AdWords can be great for local hotels and restaurants, for example – things people are actively searching for.

Facebook, on the other hand, isn’t a search engine; it’s more of a casual browsing tool where people go to view and interact with content. Essentially, Google users have a question and they want an instant answer. Facebook users are more open to lasting relationships with brands that peak their interests.

Campaign goals

The points we covered on user intent give you a number of clues about how Facebook advertising suits certain campaign goals more than AdWords. If you’re a brand with a strong identity and you want to engage with a wider audience, then Facebook makes an ideal mobile platform.

Audience targeting

Facebook targeting works very differently to AdWords and the beauty of this is you can pinpoint audiences based on their interests. Facebook’s vast pool of user data is a world away from the info Google has access to and this allows you to reach people on a more personal level.

Personalised, engaging ads

The data and audience targeting potential of Facebook allows you to create highly personalised ads to target user interests at different stages of the buying process. You don’t need to rely on vague ads that target everyone with the same broad message; you can speak to people directly with a personalised message and bring them a huge step closer to your brand.

Following users, everywhere they go

The key takeaway from Facebook’s acquisition of Atlas was the ability it would give advertisers to track users across multiple devices and offline interactions in a more reliable way. Mobile advertising was stuck in a sort of no-man’s land, due to a lack of accurate data for mobile and the journey users take between different devices, at each stage of the buying process. Atlas now gives you this opportunity – and it’s also forced Google to up its own game on the mobile ads front.

So where does Facebook fit into your mobile PPC strategy?

Hopefully, you can see by now where Facebook might fit into your mobile PPC strategy. If branding is an important part of your marketing goals then it’s hard to resist the pull of Facebook advertising.

What will be interesting to see is how the tech firm handles its journey into social commerce, which starts with the introduction of buy buttons on Facebook pages. If users take to commerce features on Facebook, we could see a new set of user intents and target audiences emerge on the world’s number one social network – not to mention fresh opportunities for mobile advertisers.